


May Contain Nuts

by wordybirdy



Series: Trifle Bubbles - One-Shots & Multi-Chaptered [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Fluff, Humor, Multi, Romance, Summer, mazes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-05
Updated: 2013-07-05
Packaged: 2017-12-17 17:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/870333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordybirdy/pseuds/wordybirdy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Summer triptych featuring three variants of the Holmes & Watson pairing.  Each pair entrapped – against better judgement and for different reasons – inside a sprawling and unreasonable garden maze.  </p><p>Fluffy vignettes in Canon, Silly-Canon and BBC 'verses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Canon

** Part One – Canon **

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Holmes,” I said quietly. “I think that we're lost.”

Dridlington Hall, a stately home in deepest Surrey, finds itself open to the public during Summer months. Its rooms are many, its sights exquisite and its architecture splendid. It was not, however, the Hall itself that vexed us so this day, but rather its garden, or more precisely, its garden maze. The largest in all of England, boasting hedges eight feet high, there may well be ghosts that roam it that have not yet found its exit.

I may exaggerate, but yet, this was the strange conundrum that Holmes and I were in. We were standing at a corner point of somewhere, close to the middle or the edge, we could not say.

“John, you scintillate this morning,” said my friend. “You really do.”

“We have been walking around in circles and doubling back for quite ten minutes,” I replied. “And I am certain that we are no closer to the centre than we were at the start. Whatever happened to your unrivalled sense of direction?”

Holmes tutted and brushed past me, walked a few steps further in. He turned around. 

“This is supposed to be an enjoyable way of spending one's leisure hours?” he enquired. His expression was carefully neutral.

“Many people find it so, I believe,” I replied. “This is the largest maze in all of--”

“Yes, yes,” he snapped, “I know. In all of England. Well, these thick hedges make things blasted hot. And they are full of flying insects.” His lips pursed in a moue. “Where _is_ everyone?”

I squinted at my pocket-watch.

“At lunch, I should imagine. I recall observing a number of picnic tables beside the lake.”

Holmes took up my elbow and propelled me forward. I heard an uncomfortable buzzing close by my right ear. We rounded a corner to yet another green pathway. I swatted with my handkerchief.

“By the time we reach the centre he will have gone,” my friend said, thin-lipped. “It was entirely ridiculous to agree to our meeting in such a place. Whatever _was_ he thinking of.”

“We could try shouting out?” I suggested.

“No, John, we really could not,” said Holmes. “I have my reputation to consider.”

This struck me as comic. My sudden guffaw earned me a pinch to my rear and a push to move on, deeper into the jungle. 

From far away, perhaps by the lake, we heard the faint trills of happy laughter, of children playing. Further still, the sound of carriages arriving and departing: the morning visitors sated with culture giving way to the fresh crowd of “afternooners”. I was vaguely hopeful that some may trickle through to the maze area, and – poor brave, foolhardy souls – venture in, allowing us to tag on to their coat-tails. For Holmes's patience – so usually infinite with the intricate – was now wearing impossibly thin. To his mind mazes were a folly, and he took great pains to treat such follies with the disdain they deserved.

We had slowed to a halt. The buzzing was increasing. The air felt thicker, somehow.

“Well?” I said.

Holmes glared.

“We are a little nearer, I believe.”

“It could be a cunning blind,” I said, “and we'll find ourselves turned back at the next corner.”

“If that happens,” said my friend, “then I shall be absolutely _livid_.”

I caught hold of his chin, drew him down, kissed his mouth. We lingered there for moments. Embracing in the Summer air (albeit hemmed in by eight foot hedges) felt very pleasantly illicit. We were grateful for the shingle paths that would alert us to any danger in the form of our fellow explorers. But for now, all was beautifully quiet. I thrust my tongue into his ear.

“You should have been christened _Stromboli_ ,” I whispered. “It seems far more befitting than _Sherlock_.”

I heard him snort soft in amusement.

“I have been called many things in my time,” said he, chuckling, “but never a fitful volcano. All the same, I think that I like it.” 

A bead of perspiration had trickled down from his left temple and sat precarious on his jaw. I licked it, traced its passage to his hairline, standing on tiptoes. I felt his strong fingers clench, tighten their grip upon my shoulders.

“You ought never to tease a volcano,” he murmured.

“But I am so very fond of the lava,” I said, pouting.

He grasped my arm, and we moved on, past a tiny swarm of midge-flies, to take a left, a right, another left.

And here the narrow pathway opened out into a square – at last! And this area was grassed, with tall hedge columns as decoration, and strewn with flower beds and benches, linen canopies and wrought ironwork.

“About damned time,” said Holmes.

I smiled about me. “It is beautiful,” I said. “Look at the flowers.”

“Never mind about the flowers,” said he. “Where is our man?”

The square was large and generously ornamented. Fellow arrivees were not evident. We peeked around tree trunks and craned our necks across nookways. It was there, upon a bench, in a shaded, leafy spot, where we caught up with our host.

“ _There_ you are,” said Mycroft Holmes. “Did you get lost?” The ham sandwich, raised the halfway to his lips but now in stasis, quivered with his silent laughter.

“No,” said my friend, “we did not. Shut up, Mycroft.”

Mycroft waved a hand in grandest gesture towards a white tablecloth spread out across a tree stump. Upon it there laid delicacies that made my mouth fair water. Bread rolls and knobs of butter, jams and pâtés, juicy green grapes, small pastries, meats and cheeses, and all arranged so temptingly. Inside the picnic basket rested two bottles of white wine.

“Do help yourselves,” said the elder Holmes. 

I did not require further encouragement. Hot and thirsty, footsore and famished, I thanked Mycroft for his kindness and helped myself to a little of everything. The bench, a blissful harbour.

“Sherlock, you simply must try this cheese,” said his brother. “It contains nuts.”

“I feel just like Alice, fallen down through the rabbit-hole,” said my friend. “The cheese contains _what?_ ”

“Stilton with walnuts,” I said through a mouthful. “It is incredibly good.”

It seemed to be the way that a great many of our encounters with Mycroft Holmes revolved around food in one form or another. The longer that I came to know the man, I detected hints of joie de vivre, kept well hidden for the most part. But every now and then: a smile, a twinkle, more, to speak such silent volumes.

Of course, with these two brothers, I had long learned that nothing should surprise me. Impossible and complex, both, but each delightful should one care to peel the layers of the onion.

We rested there a good while, exchanging news and tidbits and exclaiming on the Sauvignon. As one man, we awarded a round of spontaneous applause to the first fellow who huffed into our view in elated relief from the coil of the maze.

“Every man who makes it through should be given a medal, I do declare,” said Holmes.

“So you _did_ get yourselves lost,” said his brother, amused.

“No,” said my friend, “we did _not_. Shut _up_ , Mycroft.”


	2. The Silly Variant

** Part Two – The Silly Variant **

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Holmes,” I said quietly. “I think that we're lost.”

The words were said so quietly, for indeed I was half hoping that my friend should not yet hear them. For to hear them would result in one or both of two possibilities. One: that he should deny the fact, with tolerable good grace. Two: that he should deny the fact with no grace whatsoever, and so fall into a sulk.

“How can we be lost?” he demanded, six paces yet ahead of me. “I followed that ridiculous poem to the letter.”

I heard him mumble something further, but he was too far from my range. I imagined an invective, halfway charming, mostly schoolyard.

I trotted to catch up to his stride. An intriguing new case had led us up to this point, now ensconced in thick hedge-leaf and crunching through shingles. A missing servant, a secret, an ancestral poem. The poem was a mystery in itself to be deciphered. The servant had hidden it safe in his room; therefore it must be of importance. If any man could lay claim to triumph, then Sherlock Holmes was he.

Except that Mr. Sherlock Holmes, at this moment, was having a spot of bother.

“It was ten steps to the thingie and then fifty to the whatsit,” said he, over his shoulder. “That took us to the boathouse where I got my trousers wet.”

“I remember,” I said, wincing.

“Then it was across the way to the big fat tree with the spotty mushrooms sprouting out of it,” Holmes continued. 

“Toadstools,” I corrected.

“I am _not_ talking toadstools, Watson, you were there as well.”

“No, no,” I said. “I meant that – oh, never mind.” 

“And from _there_ , I very cleverly calculated that we should take seventy one and a half steps west, which led us to this maze.” He sighed. “We should find the whatever it is in the centre. If we don't _die_ first.” 

I re-examined the worn paper scroll that held the versed ancestral words, handed down in grand tradition over the centuries. That Holmes could make such sense of them was testament to his genius. I had little enough idea of how close to the nucleus we in fact truly were, but we had been walking a great many minutes and I am by nature an optimist. I quietly thrilled at the secrets the centre might hold: A tunnel? A statue, with unseen sliding panel? Or merely a shallow hole in the soil, covered over and tramped on for many hundreds of years? Treasure! Fortune! Reward!

“Watson,” said my friend. “Why are you pulling a stupid face?”

I shook myself back to reality.

“Holmes,” I said, “where are we now?”

“We are inside a maze,” he replied proudly.

“Yes, I _know_. But, are you able to deduce if we are any closer to our goal?”

Holmes thought for a moment. He rubbed his chin, narrowed his eyes and looked up to the clouds. His intelligent grey eyes, so full of insight and alacrity, came to land on me at last.

“No,” he said.

He foraged inside a trouser pocket, withdrawing a leather pouch and then from that, a small pair of scissors. He snapped at the air experimentally.

“I am going to cut my way through,” he explained. “The path we want is on the other side, I am sure of it.”

“But--”

I stared at the hedge before me. It was at least twenty inches thick.

“You will shred yourself to ribbons,” I said. 

“I have no intention of _chewing_ my way through,” said Holmes. “That is what the scissors are for.”

He proceeded to snip away at a small section close to the ground.

“Holmes, you are damaging private property,” I told him.

“Oh, it'll grow back,” said he, airily.

I watched him work busily for five minutes. There was scant evidence of progress as the minutest pile of stick and foliage grew beside him. Holmes looked up at me at last; his face was flushed from the exertion.

“These scissors are blunt and now my fingers are sore,” he complained. “Watson, might I borrow your pen-knife?”

“Enough of this madness,” I said firmly. “I am very sorry about your fingers, but I cannot allow you to ruin my knife on a hedge. Look, now.” I crouched, and with my hands fashioned a stirrup shape. “Put your left foot in the stirrup, Holmes, and I shall hoist you.”

My friend stared at the 'stirrup'. He peered at me sideways.

“You are wanting to throw me over the hedge?” he enquired in a tremulous voice.

“ _No_. Although, now you come to mention it, it is a tempting notion. It is so that you might see just over the top, and perhaps work our route through this maze.”

Holmes acquiesced – to my relief – to be thusly elevated. He hovered there for seconds, where I imagined him to be scanning the green hedge-tops, collecting data.

“Watson!” said he. “It is rather pretty up here.”

“Holmes, please hurry up, and save your sightseeing for later,” I entreated. “I am not sure how much longer my stirrup will last.”

It was then, as my friend was wriggling in my handhold, that my memory alighted upon a small gift of yesteryear, purchased for him on a whim. A sleek and polished block of wood, with a marble rolling within its integral maze. Rotate the block, release the marble: a clever puzzle, a child's delight. It had driven Holmes mad. This entire scenario so reminded me of that gift.

A crunching of the shingle, as my friend landed safe back beside me.

“Left, forward, right, forward, right, left, left, forward, right, left, forward, left!” said he, with a grand air of triumph.

“Oh, thank goodness,” I said. “Let's be off, then.”

The maze's centre court was overgrown and weed-strewn; many withered vines and flowers. I suspected that the gardener's navigation was little better than our own on this account. I looked around for evidence of what we might be seeking. I looked around for Holmes.

“Why are you sitting down?” I asked, incredulous. “And why are you lighting your pipe?”

“I am contemplating my next course of action,” said he, amidst great plumes of smoke.

“Well, you do that,” I said. “We should have brought biscuits.”

I stomped around in an angry chunter.

“You are a nut,” I said. “A nut, inside a maze, inside a garden. _We have to find Brunton!_ ”

Call it frustration or heatstroke. Call it whatever you like, but my words had the power to take effect on my friend. He tapped out his pipe and stood up, strode over the grass to the patch where I stood and placed his hand on my arm.

“I have a headache,” said he. “Please don't shout.”

It goes without saying, of course, that we did eventually track down poor Brunton. Although not in any tunnel, or remote hideaway far away from Mudgrove Manor. The fellow, in fact, had not made it quite so far. We discovered him, asleep, curled up tight within a passage of that great and winding maze. He had not made it to the centre; he had failed, the same as others, as so many had before us. The poor, defeated servant, who blinked at us wearily as we roused him, was delivered to his employers to pass judgement as they saw fit – for no crime had been committed, after all.

And of the treasure, well, that remains yet a mystery, and best kept hidden, for we found no sliding panel, no grand reveal, no golden prize. Assuming it should exist at all, it will likely stay in blissful shroud for a further hundred years.


	3. The BBC, And Therefore Very Current

** Part Three – The BBC, And Therefore Very Current **

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Sherlock,” said John quietly. “I think that we're lost.”

The sun was scorching hot, which didn't help. Nothing helped. The shingle was sharp and uncomfortable. John wriggled as best he might, to burrow his rear into a softer spot, a forgiving patch of soil.

“We are _not_ lost,” said Sherlock, behind him. “How long have you known me?”

“Over a year. And I'm starting to regret all of it. This is serious.”

John felt a pressure against his back, the heat and friction of another body; his so-called friend. The touch, perhaps as comfort. More likely, of irritation.

“ _Not_ serious. A mere – ow! – trifle.”

“You call this a trifle? They took both of our phones. They tied us up hand and foot, and back-to-back. They've left us here to dehydrate, and pass out, and quite possibly worse, in the middle of a _maze_. A maze in the garden of a stately home that's closed to the public all this week for renovations. This is not a bloody trifle, Sherlock; this is a very lost situation that we've found ourselves in.”

Sherlock deigned not to reply. At least, not in words. John heard him _chuckle_ , which was ten times as frustrating. But then he loved situations like this, didn't he. Anything dangerous or impossible, or highly likely to end in death, oh, Sherlock Holmes, he just couldn't get enough. Adrenaline junky. Action man. Twat.

John wriggled again, gingerly testing the thin cord at his wrists. It wasn't so tight as to cut into the flesh, but it was awkward, and made the more so by extending in loops and knots from John to his errant flatmate, who was wriggling just as enthusiastically at his own end. Their sitting position was such that they were unable even to shuffle into the shade.

“Has this year really been so bad?”

Sherlock had been re-running the conversation inside his head. Something inside him stung and flapped at the words John had used. _'I'm starting to regret...'_ It had been _fun_ , though, hadn't it? For the most part? Sherlock knew without any doubt that he had never smiled so much in all his life as this past year. And laughed. And been a bit happy. More than a bit. Did this mean that John wasn't feeling the same way? Was it really all because of being tied up in a maze? He still had all his own teeth, didn't he, and both arms and both legs. What a fuss.

“No,” John admitted, after a long pause during which Sherlock imagined he might never breathe again. “Actually, it's been great. Just what I needed. Well, no, I didn't need _this_ , but you know what I mean.”

Sherlock nodded, even though John couldn't see him. He felt enormously relieved. So John _did_ enjoy danger. Except when it was dangerous. That was a bit confusing, but never mind. There were far more important things to occupy his brain with at this moment.

“Those men took my phone.”

That was incredibly annoying. Now how on earth was he going to text Lestrade, or check the weather forecasts over the next 48 hours? He squinted up into the sky. Not a cloud in sight. A vast and shimmering wealth of deep blue. Hello, heatstroke.

“They took my phone too,” said John. “I did say. And we're lucky they didn't shoot us. They looked the type that might.”

“You still have all your teeth and your arms and your legs,” said Sherlock.

“What?”

“I'm saying that you should be more optimistic, John. Now, I know you're trussed up like a chicken, but are you able by any amount of manoeuvring to reach one of your hands inside my trouser pocket?”

John twisted his head. He looked down.

“I don't know. Which pocket?”

“I'm not sure, I can't remember. Not the one that has nuts in it.”

“ _Nuts?_ ”

John wasn't altogether sure if his eyebrows could cross over any further.

“Yes. Nuts. Hazelnuts. In the shell. For heaven's sake, John, why is that so incredible? So, not that pocket. The other one.”

John began to stretch his hands towards his friend. The cord tightened and nipped, but by shifting position slightly he managed to draw up a little slack. He reached Sherlock's left trouser pocket and fumbled inside it. Hell, this was tricky. The tips of his fingers touched a clutch of hard orbs. 

“Nuts,” said John.

“Oh.”

“The other one, then.” John removed his fingers, jiffled and rebalanced, and set out to explore the other side of Sherlock. “What am I looking for now, exactly?”

Sherlock had fallen very quiet. John peered over his friend's shoulder.

“Sherlock? What am I looking for?”

“A _pen-knife_. You're looking for a pen-knife, John. And if you feel anything that doesn't feel like a pen-knife, well, just ignore it.”

“Those guys really weren't that smart, were they,” mused John. “Overlooking such a vital-- Sherlock, what the hell is _this?_ ”

Sherlock twisted in annoyance.

“I told you _not_ to remove anything that wasn't a pen-knife. Put it back. Get the knife.”

“It's a...”

“Please get the knife.”

“But...”

“It's a prophylactic, John, yes, I am fully aware, now is that all? Put it back.”

John put it back. His brain was a tilterwhirl of questions and flashbacks and general disorder, and a little neon banner that was flashing on and off: _Sherlock has sex? Sherlock has sex? Sherlock has sex?_

His fingers closed around the knife at last. He drew it out.

“Er, ok. I've got it.”

John was aware of Sherlock waggling his fingers in request. He managed to drop the knife into the outstretched palm.

“Thank you.”

_Sherlock has sex?_

(Fuck _off_ , neon banner. I don't know. And it's none of my business anyway, is it?)

_Sherlock has--?_

“Sherlock, are you having sex?”

Oh god. John absolutely had _not_ intended to say that out loud. Especially not in the vicinity of an unpredictable, high-functioning sociopath with a flick-knife in his hand.

Sherlock froze.

“Not at this precise moment, no,” he said slowly. “I'm cutting through cord. Or is that reminiscent of a sex act to you?”

“No! No, of course not, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to...”

“John, if you carry on jerking like that then the knife is going to slip and stab an artery. Keep still. I'm almost there.”

John kept still. He did his best to clear his thoughts. He pulled the electric plug on the neon sign. It flickered and sputtered. It refused to go out. 

One of the cords pinged, freeing John's left hand. 

“Brilliant! Thanks. You're pretty good at this after all. I take back everything I said.”

Another minute saw the destruction of a second cord, and John was rubbing both wrists and undoing the remaining few knots. Wrists and ankles all clear, they both stood. Unsteadily, they walked together to a bench inside the shade. Sitting on something that wasn't sharp shingle felt like heaven to John's sore backside.

“We live to fight another day,” Sherlock remarked. “What an anticlimax.”

“Too easy for you, eh.” John looked around. Of all the surreal places they could have been trapped in, this just took the biscuit. It was a beautiful spot, all the same. Flower beds and benches, linen canopies, wrought ironwork. Very nice. A bit of a shame you had to sweat blood and tears around five miles of maze before you got anywhere close to it.

“I carry odd things in my pockets,” said Sherlock abruptly. “And not always for reasons that you might expect. Hazelnuts might not be meant for consumption. The... other, might not necessarily be used for... the other. Don't jump to conclusions.”

“Ok,” said John. 

Why did that explanation of Sherlock's feel even vaguely comforting? _(I don't know.)_

And the little neon banner starts flashing on and off again: _Yes you do. Yes you do. Yes you do._

(Yes, I suppose I do. It just took me a year to realise. _Adrenalinejunkyactiontwat_. Couldn't be someone normal, could it. That'd be too simple.)

“Dinner? Tonight? Somewhere nice, for a change?”

Sherlock looks at him, surprised.

“Yes,” he replies, cautiously. “I'd like that.”

John smiles.


End file.
